unloading

I have I a new laptop - this one is just for me and I plan to tote it around and, hopefully, catch most of my thoughts that travel through my head each day and exit each evening - never making it to fruition. Someone. someone very young, on our faculty died  unexpectedly this week and I, once again, understand how temporary and sudden life is.I have taken a long time to unload baggage that is surplus and societal . I continue to do so hoping to get to my core soon. It is so freeing to let so many unnecessary worldly things drop and walk away from. I find myself putting value only in intangibles – imagine the free space that gives me! I wrestle with anxious emotions still but I am working on that – more faith is needed here. Anyway, writing my thoughts down in syntax, caring for my family, planting potatoes, preparing healthy food and a twenty minute nap in a room with an open window is what I hope this day brings for me.

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light

   "Evil is like a shadow - it has no real substance of its own, it is simply a lack of light. You cannot cause a shadow to disappear by trying to fight it, stamp on it, by railing against it, or any other form of emotional or physical resistance. In order to cause a shadow to disappear, you must shine light on it."

Shakti Gawain, teacher and author (b. 1948)

 
I love this positive way of removing evil - it seems much of the way people combat one evil deed is with another and we all know where that gets us.

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again

I am re posting something that I am thinking of almost exactly one year later - this was a February 20, 2010 post and I find myself, again, contemplating this thought. I evaluate this past year in regards to this concept and I feel I have modestly practiced this philosophy - but...I need to implement more - hence, the re post.

I spent some of the morning reading my new book. It is one of Og Mandino’s books, The Greatest Secret in the World. Interesting and inspirational. So far, this is my favorite collection of words: “Good habits are the key to all success. Bad habits are the unlocked door to failure.” This resonates with me because I believe life is cumulative, every little thing moves us in a certain direction. Just as every thought we think becomes part of our fabric, everything we do positions us on a course. I have told this to my kids – make good choices, each day, each moment will position you in a place to decide between and amongst certain things – choose the right one. I think it really is simple, we just tend to clutter it up to where the edges are smeared and the choices become complicated. Overthinking. Anyway, I will focus on developing good habits, small ones that will add up to something good. I think more about Og Mandino’s analogy of the little “ant that can devour a tiger” – one little bite at a time – moving in the right direction. I feel empowered; I feel I can do what I want to do with a positive attitude and persistence – “stick to itness”.

I am in need of some sunshine and warm weather. I need to be in my garden planting seeds and fussing at my chickens. Spring officially arrives on March 20, about 1 month from today. I took a walk around today and found plum blossoms, a new assortment of birds, a bluer sky, and a promise of spring stirring in the wind. I am setting goals today – lofty goals that I will achieve.

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more thankfulness

Look around, there are children who are hungry. They are disguised; some of them may even look overweight, but those extra pounds are put there with hotdogs and Hamburger Helper and meat from a tube. I am going to school today with a huge basket of bananas and organic apples and whole wheat crackers and I am looking for a charitable dentist to fix a little girl's front tooth that has broken off from decay - decay caused be so much refined sugar and cheap food...look around, children are hungry.

something to think about

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gifts

and so begins the day...a somewhat quiet Thursday, work, laundry, theater, conversations with friend sand family, writing, king cake, reading the paper, cooking supper, talking to God,  picking eggs,remembering, surprises...a beautiful day, a gift just for me. thank you.

blessed

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from "remember when"

lennon on love

We've got this gift of love, but love is like a precious plant. You can't just accept it and leave it in the cupboard or just think it's going to get on by itself. You've got to keep watering it. You've got to really look after it and nurture it.
John Lennon

happy valentine's day

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creativity

Okay, this is good, really good...Elizabeth sent it to me today and it is ringing in my head all day.



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where?

I want to find time to read more – historical books about people and food and the earth. Winter is nearly gone; maybe it will be summer reading. It has to be winter or summer; spring and fall are too busy in the garden and the yard. I think I would find everything in my life to be deeper and more powerful if I read about its history – origins, birth, beginnings, foundations. It seems everything and everyone is constantly evolving, never really arriving or getting “there” but everyone and everything has been “there” and that “there” is tangible and I can learn from it – everything else is speculation.

I found this random quote and I do not know who coined it (so sorry);I kinda like it:

 “If you advance with confidence in the direction of your dreams, and begin to live the life you imagine, you’ll meet with success beyond your wildest imagination.” Cool

Now, don’t substitute the word “success” with “money” – not the same thing, totally different stuff, not even close…

test

This might be kinda fun for you to take. It is certainly not professional or precise but I found out that I do have somewhat of left brain functioning ability!! I am dominant right brain, but I have managed to navigate through 56 years of life somewhat safely.

http://www.wherecreativitygoestoschool.com/vancouver/left_right/rb_test.htm

socrates

Remember, no human condition is ever permanent. Then you will not be overjoyed in good fortune nor too scornful in misfortune.
Socrates

I love this; it is so comforting. It is amazing how someone that lived over 2400 years ago can still be relevant. I agree with this philosophy and try to live my life in the middle somewhere - never making much to do about highs and holding my breath through the lows, waiting for them to end. I love that middle ground, that ho hum of the everyday, dishes to wash, grass to cut, supper to cook, kids to hug, friends to call, seeds to sow, moments to laugh, bills to pay, chickens to feed, words to write, paintings to paint, granola to make, berries to pick, walks to take, buttons to sew, towels to fold, groceries to buy, beds to make, and songs to hear; the best parts of my life . Thank you Socrates for saying what I feel.

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kindness

Beginning today, treat everyone you meet as if they were going to be dead by midnight.  Extend to them all the care, kindness and understanding you can muster, and do it with no thought of any reward.  Your life will never be the same again. 

Og Mandino

The sun is out today; it has broken through the gloom and cold and is scattered throughout my house and it is very welcomed. I have enjoyed these few winter days of being held inside, too cold to spend more than a moment outside watching through the kitchen window, but I think a day of sunshine will be especially nice. This morning I am thinking of my 20^th birthday, surely propelled by the stillness of the season and my house at this moment. I am there because I am thinking about my dear friend that I spent that birthday with and I am thinking of her because she lives in New York and I always think of her when this extreme winter weather barrels in on her state. These little beads of memory lead me to a painting, a painting I did that long ago of “birthday flowers”. My friend and I were art students in Nice, France in 1974 and on June 29, I turned 20, but no one knew it was my birthday except her. We had NO money but she showed up with a random bouquet of delicate birthday flowers she had bought at the French Market and I did a small painting of them; it still hangs on my wall. I have had 56 birthdays and certainly do not remember most of them, but this is one I am remembering on this cold February day. It is the act of kindness that I still hold dear and although I seldom see my old friend, she is there in my little painting and is there in how I see the world; she was sunshine.

A bit of fragrance always clings to the hand that gives roses. 
Chinese Proverb
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now

It’s so wonderful now, now that it doesn’t matter if the paint is peeling or the whatumacallit is broken or if it is rusty or squeaky or missing or crooked; it only matters that it is there and that I have time and energy to clean it. To tidy it up. I have given up trying to replace things that are old and used; I now enjoy them. I have released this wasteful preoccupation of my youth where I thought the surface of things, literally, were important enough to have (steal) my time and my money. I love this place I am in now, it is so much more comforting and pleasurable and it is as it should be. The patina should wear off of the tables just as I lose the color in my hair and the arbor should lean just a bit from bundles of wisteria that were once there just I lean ever so slightly from the weight of motherhood and 56 years of life. It is how it all happens, time and wear, bending, breaking, but with it emerges a deeper splendor, one that is so much easier to be with than the beauty of youth, not as exciting perhaps, but far less anxious and demanding. I like it here.

 I think about my grandmother and how she lived in a tiny two bedroom house with one bathroom and a wringer washer where she raised 5 children and then my mother who had a three bedroom house with two bathrooms and an electric washer and dryer and only 3 children. I remember how my grandmother, her mother, would fuss about having so much when she would come to visit – so many clothes, so many things. I have more than my mother and having more means having less (time). My grandmother had time to sit on the porch every afternoon to visit with whoever walked by or stopped in; my mother had coffee nearly every weekday afternoon with her best friend, Flo. I, rarely do either of those things – too much stuff. Okay, I have to stop, I am depressing myself. I will work on this; I am determined to spend this chapter of my life beneath the surface.

Their They’re There

It’s not that hard

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differences

a grade school drawing that is remarkable (and different)

What would life be like if we focused more on what we have and less on what we don't have? I am not referring to material possessions; I am thinking about characteristics, although all of that "stuff" that people allow to define themselves can be part of this thought if you need for it to be. I mean things about you that make you different, things that are not status quo, things that make you you. Being comfortable with who you are allows you to be confident and that confidence projects and it becomes how the world sees you, as an extraordinary and one of a kind person.Celebrate the differences that make you you.

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Inquire Within

Internalizing seems to be my winter theme. I hear others talk about it also, people I might not even expect to go beneath the surface of their lives, sorry, but so true.I am convinced it is what winter requires. It starts with a cold day and a closet; you start "cleaning out" things, knocking down the literal cobwebs and ultimately discovering their figurative counterparts in your mind. There, is where the real work begins. "There" is where I am. It seems that as each year arrives, I release more baggage; for whatever reason, I am lightening the load - the load of youth, the load of pressure, the load of lists, the load of propaganda and society's set of plastic rules, and instead I am feathering my nest with my interpretations of what matters. How long does it take to "be you"? For me, it has been an evolutionary process filled with cause and effect situations that have brought me here. It is so hard to "listen", to internalize, because the world is filled with distractions - distractions that are mostly composed of propaganda driven by $.

"What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us."
Henry David Thoreau

 

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